


The Gift Exchange Debacle of 2022

by femvimes



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Holidays, M/M, Pre-Canon, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 11:29:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13189131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femvimes/pseuds/femvimes
Summary: Before Newt and Hermann were stationed in Hong Kong, they were stationed in Alaska, for 2 long and cold years. During one holiday season, they and their fellow scientists participate in a gift exchange. Newt has Hermann, but it's a little hard to get him a present when the mail plane is unreliable.





	The Gift Exchange Debacle of 2022

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Oblivion_Wanderer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oblivion_Wanderer/gifts).



The gift exchange wasn’t Newton’s idea. But you’d think it was, the way Hermann complained about it to Newt. Up in the Alaskan Shatterdome, it was too cold to go outside, so the only thing to do was stay inside and annoy each other.

“It’s a complete waste of funds,” fumed Hermann for the third time that week. Behind his back, Newt made blabbing motions with his hands. “Having to get a gift shipped here from the continent. Totally ridiculous.”

“First of all, the price limit is $15, Herm,” Newt said calmly. They were walking between labs and were thus bundled up against the cold that seeped in through the metal hallways. “Second of all, you didn’t have to participate. And third of all, you could always _make_ something. I know Dr. Wong is crocheting a lap rug for Alan’s wheelchair. But don’t tell Alan! She wants it to be a surprise.”

“I’ll counter all of your arguments, _Dr._ Geiszler,” Hermann said with a steel-edged voice. To anyone else he would have seen mad, but Newt knew that arguing with Hermann kept him warm and, more importantly, occupied. A bored scientist was a dangerous thing. All right, it was safer to have a bored mathematician than Kaiju biologist, but still. Hermann might write a computer virus in his spare time.

Boredom made people do strange things.

“Firstly,” Hermann stuck a finger up in the air with each point. “You full well know that shipping to get here eats up that $15 and _more_. Secondly, it would have been awkward and ill-advised for me to be the only k-scientist in the dome to not participate. And thirdly, I am not especially creative. Unless somebody would like to get a mathematical proof as a gift.”

“Probably not,” said Newt with a grin. “Okay, you got me on the first and third one. But the middle one? You could always play the Jewish card.”

“My faith is not a _card_ , Newton!” Hermann snarled and threw his hands up in the air. Newt winced.

“Dude, calm down! I thought you said you weren’t practicing?”

“I’m not!” said Hermann, calming down only slightly. “I don’t want to use it as an excuse, though. People already think I’m strange enough.”

“Strange? Nah.” They turned the final corner and reached their destination, the break room of the science wing. “ _I’m_ strange. You’re pretty normal compared to me. Just stick with me, Hermann, and you’ll always be the sane one.”

Hermann rolled his eyes and shouldered the door open. “It would seem that I am stuck with you regardless. Lucky me.”

***

For once, Hermann wasn’t exaggerating about the price for shipping. Everyone still bought things off Amazon, and ever since Seattle was attacked, they’d moved their main location to the second campus in New Jersey. That made it even harder to get out to the remote Alaskan location. The Shatterdome was called the Anchorage Shatterdome, but in actuality it was 50 miles away from Anchorage in a location only accessible by plane. This meant that the mail came by plane once a week. Newt and Hermann had been in Anchorage for 2 years so far--2 cold and isolated years—and every year around the holidays, the mail plane got so full with packages that some things had to wait until after New Year’s to get in. Hence why Hermann had thought that a K-Sci Division gift exchange was such a bad idea.

“Chelsea, what am I gonna do?” Newton asked. He banged his head on the mess hall table. Dr. Chelsea Wong raised her eyebrows at him.

“Stop trying to give yourself a concussion, for one thing.” Newt sat up and started to pick at his food again. “If you’ve got such a crush on him, you should just be an adult and _say_ something.”

 “No, that would just make it awkward. I know he would reject me.”

Dr. Wong waved her fork in the air. “You never know until you try, Newt. I’ve known him for longer than you have and I’ve never seen him get this close to anyone.”

“Close?” Newt sputtered. “We have an apocalyptic argument every other day!” He reconsidered his phrasing. “Bad choice of words. Okay, a _passionate_ argument. Hang on, that’s worse for entirely different reasons. No, Chelsea. I’m fully convinced he hates me.”

Dr. Wong put her fork down and reached for the salt and pepper shaker. “I’m gonna make a diagram for you, because I know you’ll understand it. You like metaphors and shit, right? Pay attention.” She cleared away some space, sprinkled the pepper in a lopsided circle, and then put the pepper shaker inside the circle. Newt leaned in, interested. “Okay,” she said. “This pepper shaker is Hermann, right?”

“Right.”

"And this circle is his life. His personal space. He doesn’t let anyone get near him or get to know him. And then _you_ come along…” She skipped the salt shaker along the table and cut right through the pepper circle, disrupting the grounds. “And he doesn’t push you out. He lets you get close. As close as I’ve ever seen anyone get, anyway.

Newt sneezed.

“Didn’t your mothers ever tell you not to play with your food?”

“I’ve never spoken to my mother,” said Newt blithely. He looked up to see Hermann headed their way, tray in hand. “Wanna sit with us?”

Hermann lifted the tray. “I’m taking this to the lab. Late night tonight.”

Newt sagged in his seat. “Again? Ugh, Her-mann! Live for once! We’ve all had a rough year, we deserve some time off.”

“Time off?” said Hermann indignantly. “We don’t have _time_ for time off. Those kaiju routes aren’t going to predict themselves. Unlike some people, I’ll be working all the way through the holidays because the world is depending on me.”

"The world’s kinda depending on all of us, Herm,” said Dr. Wong lightly. Hermann looked up to the heavens, seeking patience from God.

“Not you too, Dr. Wong! You never called me by that stupid nickname until _he_ came along.”

Newt winked at him. “If my only legacy is giving you a nickname you hate but is actually harmless, then I can die happy.”

“And here I thought I was doing you a favor,” said Hermann primly, “Letting you know that the mail plane just landed.”

“Aww, sweet, thanks, Herm,” said Newt, sure to emphasize the nickname.

"That’s it.” Hermann said. “If you need me, I’ll be in my lab, protecting the world from monsters.”

He turned and began stalking away.

“Happy Holidays, Hermann!” Newt called with a full mouth. Hermann turned on his heel, his cane making an awful scraping noise along the mess hall floor.

"I’m non-practicing, you don’t have to keep saying _Happy Holidays_ to me. My mother’s side of the family celebrated Christmas.”

“Okay, then.” Newt made a bow from his seated position. “My humblest and most sincere apologies. Happy Kwanzaa, Ramadan, and Diwali.”

That really did make Hermann leave.

“Wow, smooth,” said Dr. Wong. “He’s really gonna run into your arms for a kiss now.”

“I can’t help myself!” Newt wailed. “I can just see his buttons, and I wanna push all of them, like a kid running their hands down an elevator control panel. But he’s a doofus who can’t ever take a joke.”

Dr. Wong swept her pepper circle onto the floor and resumed eating. “He takes a lot more from you than you realize. You know how he is with everyone else.” She put on a wooden expression and mimed holding a clipboard. “’Thank you, Jeremy. I agree, it should be 4.55, not 4.54. Goodbye.’ And then with you, he interacts! He argues back! Other people try to make fun of him and he just…curls up into himself. With you, he opens up.”

“I don’t think a relationship can be founded on arguing, though,” said Newt morosely. “Maybe he’ll like it when I give him a killer gift exchange present.”

Dr. Wong dropped her fork. “Wait. You’ve got _him_?”

Newt shoveled the last of his food into his mouth as he stood up. “Yep. And I’m gonna go check the mail plane for it now.”

 He began swaggering out of the mess hall. Dr. Wong shouted after him, “At least tell me what you got! Newt! Newt, come on!”

***

“What do you mean, it’s not here?”

The mail plane pilot shrugged, wind and snow whipping at his hair. He tightened his scarf a little tighter and glanced up at the sky. “I don’t know, buddy. It just isn’t. I’ve emptied out this plane. Now, can I get going, or do you want to find me a place to stay for the night?”

“Nah, get going,” said Newt, which he thought was rather generous. “There’s one more flight before Christmas, right?”

"If the weather holds,” said the pilot ominously.

***

“Well, that’s just great,” Newt announced as he came noisily into the lab. Hermann paused with his chalk hovering centimeters away from the dashboard.

“No luck with the mail plane?” he asked perceptively.

Newt crashed into his work station chair and scooted it around to face Hermann. “Nope.” He sighed and rubbed his face with his hands. “It’d be a fine gift exchange if I just had an IOU to give my person.”

Hermann resumed writing, all while not looking at Newt. “Don’t feel too badly. My present hasn’t arrived yet either.”

Newt pulled a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of his jacket pocket and put a cigarette into his mouth. “Who do you have? I hope you’ve got Chelsea. You complain all you want, but I bet you’re a good gift giver.”

He lit the cigarette and took an ecstatic puff. Hermann whirled around on his ladder and nearly fell off.

“You can’t smoke in here!” he cried. “You’ll set off the sprinklers!”

“Relax, Herm, they’re way high up,” Newt said as he took another puff. “Besides, it’s too cold to smoke outside. You don’t want me to freeze my attractive ass off, do you?”

Hermann regarded him for a few long seconds. Then he turned back to his board and muttered,

 “Maybe you could freeze your lips closed.”

Newt scowled at his back and took a drag. He tapped the ashes out into an empty mug so as not to light his papers on fire. Despite what Hermann may have said, he did exercise _some_ caution. He watched Hermann write. He loved watching Hermann work, especially when he didn’t think Hermann was noticing. Then again, he usually did his watching when there were lots of other people in the lab. Now it was just the two of them – a rarity in and of itself – and Newt wasn’t making any noise. He had to know that Newt was staring at his attractive ass. But not just his ass, Newt told himself. Where was he – yes, watching Hermann work. When Newt worked, dissecting kaiju or writing up a report, he always paused to observe or consider. Hermann didn’t ever pause. He just wrote, and wrote, furiously producing his formulas and variables and equations. He didn’t have to stop to think because his writing was his thinking. What he was writing up there, on blackboard in chalk, was the purest distillation of his mind. To Newt, it was breathtakingly beautiful.

He cleared his throat and said casually, “I hope you won’t take this the wrong way – and you probably will – but Google tells me the first day of Hanukkah is tomorrow. Are you doing anything special?”

Hermann stopped writing – he usually did when he was talking – and brushed some chalk dust off his cardigan. “Hanukkah actually isn’t one of the most important Jewish holidays. It just gets equated to Christmas because they’re around the same time of year. My family…well, if you know anything about my father, you can imagine how much fun holidays were. We don’t have a lot of traditions. My sister Karla will probably send me pictures of her family’s menorah like she always does. The Miller sisters have invited me to their small Hanukkah gathering along with one or two of the J-techs, but that’s not for another few days.” He came down the ladder in that angry way he always did, like each rung had personally offended him. “Until then, I’ve got this _damn_ gift exchange to worry about.” He began entering the numbers on his blackboard into the computer.

Newt tossed his cigarette into the dirty mug. “I know you’re a hard worker, Hermann, but come on. Can’t you celebrate? Just a little bit? You’re only human, and humans are humans, even during the apocalypse. That’s why we eat, and sleep, you know? At least I do. But more than that.” He rolled his chair closer to Hermann, who was now typing instead of writing furiously. He had a good speech coming on and wanted Hermann to hear it. “That’s why we’re fighting for humanity. For our right to have gift exchanges and eat terrible mystery meat in the mess hall and ruin our lungs with cigarettes. Not just to survive, but to live. To live as well as we can.”

Hermann looked up at him, finally, finally, and for the first time that Newt could remember, looked at him without anger or frustration or annoyance. He just…looked at him, with those deep brown eyes.

“That’s the Newton Geiszler I remember from his letters,” Hermann said softly. Newt felt like he’d been stabbed in the heart and exposed to the cold Shatterdome air, but in the best possible way. In that moment there was a flying possibility that he and Hermann could have something more than arguing. Not a romantic relationship - _that_ was something too far-fetched for Newt to visualize. Rather a relationship that was like what their letters had been, full of warmth and friendship and a sharing of ideas. He desperately wanted to not argue with Hermann. Newt was used to teasing his friends but they never took it quite like Hermann did. Despite what Chelsea had said.

“Hermann,” Newt said. He waited for a few moments until Hermann raised his eyebrows expectantly. “Are we friends?”

Hermann ducked his head. “I wouldn’t know,” he said, “having never had a friend before.”

And if Hermann’s previous statement had been like a stab to the heart, this was the killing blow to the head. Newt felt like he was going to cry. “Oh, geeze, dude, that’s – you can’t really mean that – “

Hermann smiled humorlessly, typing as he talked. “Oh, but I can. The town I grew up in was very remote. My father was rich, so he hired tutors for my siblings and I until I went off to university. I was essentially homeschooled. Then I just had classmates, or research partners, until I left my doctorate program to enroll in the Jaeger academy. I finished my thesis while I was doing the program.”

“And I thought I was badass,” said Newt weakly. “Dude, I never knew that.”

"Well, it certainly pales in comparison to your six doctorates,” Hermann sniped.

“Why, Hermann, that was almost a compliment.”

“Badass indeed,” Hermann snorted.

Newt stood up and leaned over Hermann’s janky 1990s monitor. “Just for the record, I consider you a friend. Even if you’re not quite there yet on your end.”

Hermann blinked several times. His expression was almost puzzled. “Um. All right. Thank you.”

Newt just laughed and clapped him on the back.

***

Newt’s present for Hermann was a real doozy, he thought. He remembered nerdy online stores like ThinkGeek and Forbidden Planet when he was young and manufacturing collectible figurines was still a thing. He hoped that Hermann would remember that too, and all the kooky math nerd stuff they had, like socks with Albert Einstein wearing sunglasses on them. Since this stuff wasn’t made anymore, Newt had had to scour eBay. He ended up with a present in three parts: green socks with mathematical symbols on them in white, like a blackboard; an Einstein bobblehead; and just a plane old space print mug. Hermann was a math freak, sure, but the dude was also seriously obsessed with space. The one time he’d info-dumped on Newt and sounded genuinely interesting was when he explained that the kaiju were most likely aliens.

Because the packages were all coming from different sellers, there were a million things that could go wrong. Newt had already prepared himself to give Hermann one of the pieces as a present and just produce the rest over the next few weeks. He tried not to get his hopes up when he went to meet the mail plane on Christmas Eve. Hermann was among the throng, and Newt shouldered his way to him. He immediately launched into something work-related, so Newt tuned him out.

“Geiszler, Newt” was called out shortly before “Gottlieb, Hermann” and then they were back to their rooms with packages under their arms. Newt was happily bouncing up and down. He couldn’t be sure that he had all the right ones until he got to his room, but according to all the tracking numbers he’d been refreshing every hour, these were Hermann’s presents. Hermann had only one package, a small one in a bubble-wrap envelope.

“Didn’t you order anything else for the LOCCENT tech or something?” Newt asked, jutting his chin towards the envelope. “Is that all you got?”

 “My other presents all came in weeks ago,” said Hermann. He shifted the package away from Newt on the other side of his body. “It’s just this one that’s been giving me trouble.”

 “Last chance to tell me who you got,” Newt said, half-joking. “If you need any wrapping paper you can always come to my room. That way I can see what’s in the—” he leaned in to try and see the package and Hermann shoved him away.

 “Absolutely _not_ , Newt!”

 They bickered their way down the hallway, and it wasn’t until Newt was opening all the packages (they were all there, _and_ brand new) that he realized Hermann had called him ‘Newt’.

 ***

 So far at the Shatterdome K-Sci holiday party, Dr. Wong had flirted with everyone, Newt was arguing with Alan about the music selection, and Hermann had sequestered himself away in a corner. All in all, it was a roaring success. They had cleared out the J-Tech testing area to make room for the party, and decorated it is as well as they could. Dr. Wong, the creative one, had enlisted Newt to stay up late with her and make paper chains out of mess hall napkins. Some brave soul had gone outside and cut down some greenery, so they had random fur boughs laying around, as well as some wreaths with red hots stuck on to represent berries.

 “Okay, everyone!” Newt turned down the music and raised his voice to be heard above the raucous gathering. “Now that we’ve depleted all the food the mess hall deigned to give us, and all of Alan’s edibles – thank you, Alan – it’s time for the gift exchange! You remember the rules from last year: find your person and give them their gift, they’ll find you, it’ll be glorious chaos for a few minutes. Have fun!”

 He turned the metal cover of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” up and went over to Hermann’s corner. He was surprised to see Hermann marching determinedly towards him, bearing a small gift-bag. Newt held out his somewhat-inelegantly wrapped box.

 “Uh…hi?”

 Hermann held out the gift bag and shook it at Newt. “Yes, hello. You were my person. Merry Christmas.”

 “And you were mine,” said Newt, suddenly thinking of _Tangled_. He shook the thought from his mind. Focus, Newt. “Um, that’s wild. That’s what happens when you draw names out of a hat instead of having somebody organize it, I guess…”

 “Highly unorganized method,” Hermann tched. “If you have to do it at all, you might as well do it well.” The presents changed hands and they both waited for the other to open their present.

 "Okay, I’m excited, I’ll go first,” Newt said. He took out a tree’s worth of tissue paper – “God, Herm, save some for the rest of us, why don’t you—” and then a small item wrapped in more tissue paper. He unraveled it and into his hand fell a Nintendo-64 controller, an original one, with the cord. A lump suddenly formed in his throat as he remembered several months ago complaining he’d had a J-Tech over and they’d broken his controller. Hermann had actually listened to his griping, and remembered.

 He looked up at Hermann, who was watching him anxiously. “This is great, Herm,” he said, trying not to cry. “I can’t believe you heard me bitch about this controller. I’ve been needing one of these for multi-player games.”

Hermann shrugged modestly, but he had a smug smile. “I guess I am a pretty good gift-giver. I was glad I got you, because I know you far better than anyone else in this blessed dome.”

“Where did you even find this thing? Ebay?”

“Ebay.”

“Okay, now it’s your turn,” said Newt eagerly. He watched as Hermann easily tore open his lackluster wrapping job and sliced open the cardboard box. The first thing he pulled out were the socks. “Oh, Newton,” he chuckled.

“Hey, was that a laugh?” Newt asked. “The only time I hear you laugh is when you’re laughing evilly at me.”

Hermann took out the bobblehead and set it on the desk next to him. “If I get some putty, that thing can stick to the top of my computer and wobble at me all day, disdainfully,” he said. Newt cracked up. Hermann? Making jokes? This truly was a Christmas miracle.

"Oh, a space print mug!” Hermann exclaimed. “I’ve been needing a new mug, my old one is all stained and cracked.”

“That’s because you never wash it, Herm,” Newt said. He clucked disapprovingly and shook his head. “Even I wash my dishes. We always have time to make things clean and sanitized, Hermann.”

Hermann threw the pair of socks at him. “Where did you get this stuff, anyway? I know for a fact that the Unemployed Philosopher’s Guild went out of business. Was it Ebay as well?”

"Ebay as well,” Newt confirmed.

Newt moved around the party, greeting people and picking up discarded drinks glasses. He hadn’t planned the party, but he thought that serving drinks in cleaned-out beakers was a nice touch. There were really only 10 of them there – the whole Alaskan Shatterdome K-Sci division, doctors and assistants and all. Ever since the wall started being built 2 years ago, and especially since they’d lost the Tunari brothers last month, there had been nothing but cuts. Looking at the size of the gathering, really looking, made Newt suddenly feel depressed. When he’d started there two years ago, he’d had a whole team of people working under him. The department had been almost forty people, and now this.

He decided that he needed a smoke and stepped outside onto the loading dock where they brought Jaeger parts into the lab. He had just gotten out his carton and lighter out when the door opened and there was Hermann.  

“I’ve been doing some thinking,” said Hermann as he joined Newt.

“Never a good idea,” said Newt. He offered Hermann a cigarette. He’d done it out of courtesy, but to his surprise, Hermann took it. Newt lit it for him and Hermann took a few slow puffs. Then he took the cigarette out of his mouth and regarded it.

“I haven’t done this since college. Terrible habit.”

It seemed like he was about to wax lyrical about lung cancer or something, so Newt prompted him,

“You’ve been thinking?”

“Ah! Yes.” Hermann shuffled his feet in the snow. “About what you were saying, about friends. And after that rather cheesy but ultimately sweet gift, I’ve come to a conclusion.”

Newt held his breath.

“If hard pressed, I would have to consider you a friend.”

"If hard pressed?” Newt repeated. “You mean, under torture?”

“Well, no of course not.” Hermann took a drag that managed to be annoyed. “I just mean that, well, despite all our fighting, deep down, I really…um, that is to say…”

“Care about me and junk,” Newt finished.

“Yes.”

“You know…” said Newt. He took a deep breath and plunged on. “Now that I have a second N64 controller again, we could, um. Play. Sometime. You and me.”

They both looked out over the Shatterdome complex, not making eye contact, like men always do when they’re trying to say heartfelt things. Newt noted Hermann’s silence and said quickly,

“But you don’t have to if you don’t want to. I know you’re busy and—”

“What kind of games do you have?” Hermann asked.

“Oh, gosh dude, I’ve got a bunch on a hard drive that I can hook up to it. What do you want? I’ve got Banjo-Kazooie, Mario Kart, Super Mario, some Star Wars games, Majora’s Mask—”

“Majora’s Mask?” Hermann interrupted.

"Oh, I see, you’re a Zelda kinda guy. You know, Herm, that’s not exactly a two-player game, which kinda defeats the purpose of this whole exercise.”

They took a drag on their cigarettes in sync, which would not be significant to them until three years and an ocean later.

“I played Majora’s Mask on an emulator in college, but I never actually got to finish it. It would be nice to beat a game for once. My father never let us have video games, and while I got into them in college, I ultimately became too busy to finish any.”

“That’s a shame,” said Newt sincerely. “I could just tell you the ending of Majora’s Mask, though, and save you the trouble. You see, Link—”

“No.” Hermann cut him off with that no-nonsense syllable that he could give so much weight to. This time as he said it, he was smiling. It was a secret smile that played on the corner of his lips, and Newt felt like it was just for him.

Newt didn’t know whether he was emboldened by the drinks or Hermann’s smile, but he suddenly darted forward and kissed Hermann on the cheek. Hermann batted him away and rolled his eyes.  But he didn’t outright protest or look at all offended, and that was good enough for Newt for now.

           

 

 


End file.
